It's really surprising to see a poll with a single digit lead for Obama. It's probably a bit lower than the actual current margin, but it'll be interesting to see if Pennsylvania gives Hillary a boost there. It'll be even more interesting to see if the anti-Obama Rev. Wright ads the GOP is running there all next week motivates more whites to vote for Clinton. If Clinton wins IN and comes close in NC, it's a disaster for Obama's electability argument.

I agree that 9 points is not a very good margin for Obama in NC--he would probably like to erase Clinton's PA delegate gains on 5/6.

But Obama does not need to make any electability argument, he only needs to make a been-elected argument. And if he did, it would certainly not be based on whether he wins North Carolina by 9 or 29 points. If, for some reason, he chose to participate in the silly electability debate, his argument would be based on performance vs. McCain, which shows him doing much better than HRC in states such as Oregon, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Virginia.

@Patrick:
If Senator Clinton wins comes close in NC, she will have finally have done something she hasn't done thus far AFAIK - overcome a big Obama lead if one exists.

IMHO, the major dynamic in this race is - with campaigning, the movement is typically toward Senator Obama. If Senator Clinton has well-established advantages (read double-digit leads to start - TX, OH, PA), Senator Obama closes the gap. If the race is tight, Senator Obama wins (WI, CT). I could be guilty of selective memory here, of course...

But essentially - in NC, Senator Clinton has to do something she has not thus far. Let's see what happens.

And Indiana and NC have virtually nothing to do with Electability- because Indiana is red and will prbably stay red- and it does not harm Obamas electability argument when he wins NC by 10 points- or did it harm Clintons PA-OH electability argument when she won there by that margin?

I think you can predict the outcome of primaries pretty well with 538 numbers:
Clinton average-Obama average*3 or if black population>20%: (Black Population*0,9*1,8+(95-BlackPopulation*1,8)*0,25*+5*0,55)

If I had to predict the margin of victories in the past-Super-Tuesday PRIMARIES (caucuses are a different thing) I would come to this results:

OK, this is far off and i don�t have any idea why. I know why, the turnout of black voters was just about 37% in a state with a 36,66% AA-population. But I don�t know why that happened. Probably an outlier... Anyone here who knows why the MS-blacks stayed at home?

Pennsylvania:

-3-0,2*3= 9,6% margin for Clinton. Actual it is 9,4% as far as I know.

Lets summarize:
This is the difference between the "real" margin of victories-Obama:Clinton and my predictions:

Maryland: 0,5% (really good, I think)
Virginia: 8,3% (far off, but I already explained why that happened. The state has 0,4% LESS African-American Population than I needed to use the other formula...)
Wisconsin: 1,3% ( I can live very good with anything below 2,5%, I think ... )
Ohio: 5% (a little bit off, but Clinton improved in OH since 3/4)
TX: 0,8% (again, pretty close to the actual results)
MS: 16% off (a disaster for me, I assumed about 55-60% AA-turnout with my formula, but it was less than 40% in the state with the biggest black community)
PA: 0,2% off (and I made this prediction first on 4/16- six days before the election.)

Here my prediction for NC:
52,5 Obama: 47,5% Clinton.
This is definetly too close. Why?
Because whites tend to vote more heavily for Clinton when there is a big black population and my formula covers that in a simple way.

In NC the black population has the ideal size for Obama. ENough to give him a big boost, and small enough to give him 40% of the white vote- or more.

Maybe I should increase the minimum size of AA population for using the 2nd formula to 25%.

Then I had to use the first formula and would get out:
56,15% Obama 43,85% Clinton
Maybe still a little bit too less, but i think this could be in a 2,5% range of the actual results.

Indiana:
Obama: 56,9% Clinton 41,1%
Either the Republicans love Obama in that state, the polls are dramatically wrong, or we�ll see a surprise in the primary there.

I also predict that he will get slain in WV, Clinton could get to 74% there, and in KY he is doing SO bad that my predictions can�t be right. When they are right, he would be in danger to fall below the 15% threshold...

But just look at the latest KY-SUSA poll: Clinton is competitive, he trails by 34 (!) points. Those both states have the largest margins of all 50 states- maybe he could win a Wyoming primary by a similar margin, but that was it.

For Oregon I�d predict a 63-37 Obama win.
Obama is doing a lot better against McCain in Indiana than Clinton (so much to the Electability argument)

@Jeff: The already-voted undecideds are probably people who voted in the other contests in NC but didnt' care about the nominee. Unlike PA, these contents in NC are actually meaningful, so people who care about them but are "undecided" on the nominee would still go and vote.

@Rasmus: Indiana is not part of Hillary's electability argument because it's always red, so it's possible that even if HRC loses by a little she would still stay in the race (depending on the NC margin. anything less than 10% and she will call it a decreased gap for her)

If no one has 2025 by the end of all the primaries, have the superdelegates decide immediately to finish up the process. Michigan and Florida will not count - they broke the rules, they suffer the consequences. End of story.

Super delegates can decide however they want - but they aren't stupid - not all of them anyway. They will back the candidate with the most pledged delegates and most victories in the primaries/caucuses. If they don't, they will destroy the democratic party for a generation, or more. And they will likely be voted out of office rather quickly as well.

And if you are stupidly arguing that the super delegates shouldn't back the guy with the most victories, then why have these elections in the first place?? Why not have the supers decide EVERY election year based on electability?

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